Jim Smith

FreeBit Co., Ltd. is a Japanese company that develops a wide range of breakthrough Internet services for companies and individuals, and provides the essential components necessary to create new Internet services that do not depend on Web browsers or PCs.

In February 2009, FreeBit began offering free application software ServersMan - that uses Internet connected devices as a server. ServersMan is free application software that vertically integrates web services and digital equipment and household appliances. For the domestic information communication environment, infrastructure maintenance has expanded annually in accordance with user needs for both higher quality and lower cost. Using ServersMan, individual users can turn wireless and wireline devices into a web server or online storage on a variety of platforms, including the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, cloud attached servers (CAS), and digital camcorders, with more options (such as the iPad) being developed in 2010.

FreeBit's Emotion Link product, central to ServersMan architecture, builds a secure node-to-node virtual network on the existing TCP/IP network by passing over NAT and firewalls. Using existing wireless networks increases the application range and allows remote control of network equipment such as Ethernet-enabled household appliances. With a browser, you can remotely access applications and or devices that are connected to the Emotion Link connection, and deliver data to and from the appliance in question

FreeBit needed to test the TCP/ IP network functions of these two applications to ensure that their implementation was in conformance with set standards, and could seamlessly interoperate with other TCP/IP devices and networks. FreeBit chose Ixia's IxANVL as their conformance tool to verify the operational compatibility of Emotion Link's core protocol (TCP/IP, UDP, IPv6 stack).

FreeBit was using a home-grown testing tool a test tool developed by itself during the initial development phase of MyVPN USB node, but found it inadequate in validating the EmotionLink protocols successfully and thoroughly. FreeBit is a long-time customer of Ixia's IxANVL. FreeBit found that IxANVL test solution was also effective for their ServersMan® testing, and began using it in November 2009. FreeBit compared their test tool and IxANVL and chose to move to Ixia's product.

"IxANVL helped us successfully shorten the development period by about a year, which resulted in reducing the costs to under 10 million Yen," said Mr. Seiji Tsuboi, Chinese Business Management Group Group Strategic Planning Office. "Using IxANVL significantly decreased post-release bugs, and improved both product quality and customer satisfaction."

IxANVL complies exactly with the known protocol standards of networking technologies and protocols. IxANVL was able to validate the conformance of FreeBit's EmotionLink protocol stack. When a problem was detected, IxANVL pinpoint it exactly in reference to the relevant standard. IxANVL also classifies testing of the standards definitions into three categories - MUST/SHOULD/MAY - allowing the developers to easily determine whether or not the test in necessary based on internal communications. FreeBit was also pleased with the graphically-based, point-and-click interface.

Ixia's IxANVL is the industry standard for testing conformance of networks and devices to validate Internet protocol specifications. Developers and manufacturers of networking equipment and Internet devices rely on IxANVL to automatically validate protocol compliance and interoperability. Many customers have chosen IxANVL for its ease-of-use, enhanced GUI, and flexible test automation capabilities. In addition, IxANVL offers a veritable universe of protocol libraries and utilities.

IxANVL is able to run on minimal hardware, a PC with Linux or Windows operating system and an Ethernet card; however, it is particularly well-suited to operate on Ixia's powerful test and analysis platform via a VNIC (Virtual Network Interface Card) driver. This flexibility enables IxANVL to support all industry standard test interfaces including 10/100/1G/10G Ethernet, ATM, Serial, Async, T1/E1 and POS. IxANVL provides conformance, negative, and regression testing on a vast selection of protocols including bridging, routing, PPP, TCP/IP, IPv6, IP storage, RMON, VPN, MPLS, voice over IP, Metro Ethernet and multicast.

IxANVL allows vendors to verify the product design during the entire product life cycle, and enhances product quality by enabling extensive and thorough testing performed automatically. Problems can be identified earlier in order to prevent costly last-minute reworks by determining exactly where a device's protocol software does and does not meet the specification. IxANVL emulates large, multi-node networks that were previously cost prohibitive to create.

IxANVL allows QA engineers to observe how well the device handles traffic from non-complying network components, and determines what effects new development has on existing code through regression testing